Former Supreme Court justice among '12 Ark. deaths

Monday

Dec 31, 2012 at 9:27 AMDec 31, 2012 at 9:30 AM

Others who died during the year include Arkansas native Helen Gurley Brown, who gained fame as an author and editor of Cosmopolitan magazine; former Associated Press bureau chief and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette political editor Bill Simmons; and musician Levon Helm.

KEN MILLER, Associated Press

A longtime Arkansas Supreme Court justice who, as a trial attorney, fought election fraud during the 1960s, was among the notable Arkansans who died during 2012.

Retired Justice Tom Glaze died March 30 at his home in North Little Rock at age 74.

Others who died during the year include Arkansas native Helen Gurley Brown, who gained fame as an author and editor of Cosmopolitan magazine; former Associated Press bureau chief and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette political editor Bill Simmons; and musician Levon Helm.

Glaze served as a young attorney for the Election Research Council, a project funded in 1960 by future Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, to promote election reform in the state.

"The labor of cleaning up elections became more than an employment convenience," Glaze wrote in his memoir, "Waiting for the Cemetery Vote," published last year by the University of Arkansas Press. "It became a mission and, yes, maybe an obsession, which would propel every turn I made in a legal career that spanned forty-five years."

Glaze served 21 years on the Arkansas Supreme Court before his retirement in 2008. Before that he served on the Arkansas Court of Appeals and as a Pulaski County chancery judge.

Simmons, 71, who covered Arkansas politics for nearly a half-century, including the Whitewater and Paula Jones scandals that dogged Bill Clinton's presidency, died Oct. 29.

Simmons had a 34-year career with the AP and then worked nearly 16 years with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as its political editor.

He was named Arkansas bureau chief in 1990 and two years later, after then-Gov. Bill Clinton was elected president and attention turned to his investments in a north Arkansas land development called Whitewater, Simmons was often asked to explain the wide-reaching investigation.

"It was like a black hole in space drawing all the energy out of everything," Simmons said during a 2007 interview for an oral history project at the University of Arkansas. "I had reporters from Tokyo who couldn't speak English calling me at 4:00 in the morning, you know, getting me out of bed, wanting to know things about Whitewater and about Clinton and about Hillary."

Brown, born in Green Forest, became a best-selling author with her million-selling book "Sex and the Single Girl" that offered advice, opinion and anecdotes on why being a single woman should not mean being sexless. She was hired in 1965 by Hearst Magazines as editor of Cosmopolitan, leading the magazine until 1997, although she stayed on as editor-in-chief of the magazine's foreign editions

Brown died Aug. 13 in New York at age 90.

Longtime Memphis Commercial Appeal state Capitol correspondent Joan Duffy and Perrin Jones, whose family owned The Daily Citizen in Searcy where he served as editor and later wrote a weekly column, also died during the year.

Businessman William C. Nolan Jr., 72, the chairman of Murphy Oil Corp. and a longtime executive with the company, died in March.

On the political front, former state Rep. Lloyd George Danville died at age 85. Danville served in the Legislature from 1963-66 and again from 1973-97 and regularly wore overalls on the final day of the session, saying he was returning to his farm.

Former Little Rock mayor and state Rep. George Eugene Wimberly, 92; Tommy Caubble of Wynne, the Republican nominee for a state Senate seat; and former Helena Mayor Robert Miller, who was killed when a gun he was cleaning accidentally fired, also died.

Levon Helm, who was born in Elaine and grew up near Helena before going on to fame as a drummer and singer with The Band, died April 19 at age 71. Other entertainers dying during 2012 include former Arkansas Symphony Orchestra conductor William Francis McBeth and Bill Dees of Mountain Home, co-author of the classic Roy Orbison hit "Oh, Pretty Woman."

Arminta Jones, an Ozan native and the mother of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, died at age 90 and Nolan "Notes" Richardson III, son of former Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson who was an assistant on his father's staff at UA died in May at his home in Tulsa at age 47 and longtime Harding University football coach Clifford John Prock died at age 83.

Also, Charles White, 83, one of the first blacks to work at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences when he was hired in 1958 during the Civil Rights era, died in September after retiring in December 2011 as assistant vice chancellor for employee relations at UAMS.

And Thomas Austin "Amarillo Slim" Preston Jr., the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Gambler" who was born in Johnson, died in April in Texas. Preston won the 1972 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1992.